


Golden feathers

by eatsunlight689



Series: Dream/Reader Oneshots [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Ambigous Reader - Freeform, Dream doesn't take care of himself, Other, Wing Grooming, Yes i know Dream isn't a sans but it's for tagging purposes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26372872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eatsunlight689/pseuds/eatsunlight689
Summary: You will take care of Dream, whether he likes it or not.It's not like there's a chance in hell that he's going to do it himself.
Relationships: Dream/Reader
Series: Dream/Reader Oneshots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1916587
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54





	Golden feathers

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm getting somewhere with writing Dream. 
> 
> I'm not entirely sure who first came up with the "dream has tiny baby wings" headcanon but I love it.

_ My boyfriend has wings _

_ How to clean wings _

_ Wings matted _

_ How to groom wings  _

_ Preening _

_ Fucking fuck you google _

You felt a little better about yourself after searching the last one but it didn't bring you much closer to answers. 

As it turned out an article on pet care was not going to translate well into taking care of a magic skeleton's "useless baby wings". You'd seriously considered punching Ink in the face, convinced he's come up with the phrase. He insisted it was a creator who hadn't stopped saying it for several days. You weren't sure if you believed that or not. 

You decided you loved Dreams wings. They were cute and fluttery. 

All the articles you'd read told you that your theoretical parrot would groom its own wings. But this was not a parrot. This was a magic skeleton and you were pretty sure he had never taken care of them in his life. You were pretty sure he didn't know how seeing as he apparently didn't even have wings as a child. 

In an effort to rectify the issue because seriously after seeing the state of them so many times you had to do something you had asked Ink to take you to a birdtale timeline. You bugged the local Papyrus to explain how to look after your mate's wings and seeing as it was a Papyrus, he agreed. Of course, Ink forgot he left you in birdtale which meant once Papyrus was done explaining you had to make even more of a nuisance of yourself as you stuck around for several hours. 

You hadn't seen Dream for several days. Which meant he was getting worked up again. The more research you had done the more worried you'd gotten but you really didn't want to push Dream. Ink had convinced him to come over somehow though, so now Dream was sat in the messy living room, walls covered in doodles and paintings - including a few of your own that Ink had spent hours enthusing about only to forget they existed - and clutter covering most surfaces. You climbed over the back of the sofa to sit beside him. 

"You're a dumbass." You said. 

Dream made an adorably confused noise. 

"Just in general, in the best possible way. You're a dumbass. What did you do?"

"Nothing..?" He sounded unsure of himself. Like maybe there was something. Your heart melted at the tone. 

"Oh, did Ink tell you he left me stranded in an AU last week?" You decided not to push it, sure you would learn eventually. 

"No, I didn't. Are you okay?" You recognized The look of concern in his eyelights, he was scanning you for injuries. 

"I'm fine - it was a safe AU, but hey, I wanna try something, can we?"

Dream was… hesitant. Still, he let you take his hand in yours, and was led upstairs, which was a relief. You sat him down on your bed and climbed up behind him. You removed the weird cape-ish thing and kissed where you knew his scapula spine came close to his clavicle, before laughing at yourself.

"What's funny?"

Undeterred you removed his jacket, "Scapula spine. This bit of bone that curls over your shoulder," you traced from where it started on his shoulder blade to where it ended, just short of his clavicle, and maybe his breath hitched at the sensation. "I definitely wouldn't have known that if I wasn't yours. And it's all so... I didn't even believe in monsters and now I've got a skeleton in my bed." If you filed away that lovely reaction in your mind for future reference, well, that was no ones business but your own. 

"I'm not -"

"Actually a monster, no, I know you aren't," you nuzzled the top of his shoulder blade, "But your body is very much bones. And now I know the words for them."

The wings necessitated a second pair of shoulder blades under his first. The two were fused because … magic, you supposed … but you could tell where the join was. 

Dream shivered as you gently rubbed at that join on each shoulder blade.

"Hey, Dream?"

"Yes..?"

"I love you. I love you because you're a fucking dumbass."

And then your hands were buried carefully into his right wing. His left fluttered a little in alarm (sending little golden yellow feathers flying everywhere) as you calmed him, nuzzling his cervical vertebrae. 

"Your wings are a mess, I couldn't let them be, love."

You gently ran your fingers through the soft, downy feathers, many loose ones easily becoming dislodged.

Dream relaxed into your touch, but tried to protest, "You don't have to-"

"I didn't get stranded in birdtale for hours only to not help you."

Dream didn't respond, leaving you to work through the loose feathers in relative silence for a little while.

When Dream spoke again it was with an unusual sharpness, which took you a moment to place. "Who showed you how to do this?"

You laughed, "Someone talked me through what to do, gave me advice on what sort of things I could come across, but no one demonstrated or let me practice. The Papyrus there insisted it was a very personal thing."

The already loose feathers were the easy part, done all too quickly with how small Dreams wings were. 

"It, uh, feels personal."

You ran your fingers through the feathers, trying to find one not thrumming with the magic that was, when it came to this, analogous to the blood in birds' wings. At least, that's what you gathered from the explanation you'd been given by that Papyrus.

You pressed a kiss to his spine between where the wings rested to distract as you pulled out a broken feather. Your question died before you could speak as a noise of appreciation came from Dream. Didn't hurt, good. You focused on gently removing any broken feathers you found, sometimes pressing more kisses to Dream's wing and any bones you could reach. 

You tried not to think about how many broken feathers were piling up beside you and got started on the other wing. 

"Thank you for this."

"I'm your mate, I couldn't leave you like this."

"You could have." Dream washed calm over you, and yeah, he had a point. He could take care of his own wings-

You focused on what you knew, trying to cut through the fog that had made you second guess yourself. Dream didn't want people to look after him, sure, but by now you knew he was godawful at self care and as much as he would rather have people think he could take care of everything... "What, and waited for you to deal with it? Because you won't."

"Maybe that's true... " You could hear the pout in his voice and easily picture the expression on his face. 

You kissed his skull near where it connected with his jaw, and he let out a breath.

"Let me take care of this,"

The pile of feathers beside you steadily grew, but Dream's wings were soft and fluffy as you ran your fingers through them a final time. You fought the urge to smush your face against the downy feathers. 

"I'm done."

A disappointed whine escaped Dream and you laughed. 

"I'll clean up the feathers, you get comfy in bed."

It was not as easy as just saying that, and he moved to help you. What he didn't take into account was that he was very small, and lighter than a human of his stature would be. So you just picked him up and put him in bed, before returning to tidying up the feathers. Although to be fair there were a lot that got missed; on the bed, on you, probably also on Dream meaning there would now be feathers in the bed. And that was to say nothing of the ones that were dropped as you moved the pile. 

Eh, good enough. You'd handle it later. 

Right now, you wanted to cuddle Dream. You discarded your more uncomfortable items of clothing and climbed into bed beside him.

Cheekbones flushed with a golden glow, he smiled at you, eyelights fuzzy. 

You opened your arms to him, and he buried his face in your chest as he cuddled into you. 

"I love you," you said. 

More slowly, Dream returned the words. You nuzzled the top of his skull as you were surrounded by a warm, light, relaxing feeling. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to the friend who sent me homestuck fanfiction while I was trying to write this, I've never read homesick, I have pretty much no idea who the characters were, but it helped.


End file.
